However, to get a reliable desktop with quality parts you will be better off building custom. It's actually really easy to custom-build a desktop yourself, too, you don't need a shop or a neighbor if you do a little research yourself.

Yep...our daughter Ariel, who had just about no technical training, but did work at a computer store built two of them, both have been absolutely reliable, which is much more than I can say for either of my MacBook Pro laptops.